New Scubapro S-Tek (BP/W BC's) Line

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@BoundForElsewhere

Where did you pick up that webbing?

I'm finding black boring these days, plus photographing divers wearing all black can be difficult.

Story 1
I was recently in Egypt diving with two friends both of them using traditional jacket BCDs. One of them was unhappy with his second hand BCD and was looking for a replacement.

When we were on the boat trip to dive the Thistlegorm, there were 31 divers on board, and I told my friend to have a look at what other divers were using (cattle boats can be useful sometimes). The majority were jacket style, but including my rig there were only six BPWs (approx 19%). Two of them were very new looking (nice sexy blue colour) and the rest used, one very well used or left in the sun a lot (I figure that one belonged to a local guide.

The following day he purchased a back inflate Aqua Lung BCD in Dahab and it changed his diving overnight. When we returned to Dubai I gave him an old pair of Mares fins to replace his split fins, which he used last weekend to his satisfaction.

Story 2
Back in 2019 I attended ADEX in Singapore. Almost every manufacturer had BPWs on display, not one jacket BCD to be seen. What's more they were all in colours, no black. Even the big H was displaying fluorescent green and pink wings. I saw this as a revolution in buoyancy devices in the fast growing Asian market.
 
@seacaigh

I got the yellow webbing from Randy at Piranha. The red I bought at a craft store.
 
There are three items I really liked:

-the spinner spool is fun: I've seen them around from other brands as well.

- The backplate monoprene pad seemed nice and comfortable.

For me the main win of the new scubapro S-tek line were the quad-glide shoulder d-rings.

I can't tell you many times I've had to exit choppy water in sidemount with my tanks and they would just pull my shoulder d-ring an inch or two down before finally stopping...


The price is ridiculous, but the products make sense. Except that weird lego-looking k-inflator, but well I guess scubapro just needs to get a special inflator mechanism on everything...

But those quadglides seem really good, I hope they also sell them seperately.
 
The Dive garage has 6 colours of 2" webbing in stock currently

Ha ha I know, I picked up some yellow webbing last week and changed the waistbelt on my plate :D
 
Meh. Inferior to my freedom plates. They seem to have done a lot of catching up. At that price point, I think they're trying to create a cool and trendy product, not something that demands the price because of quality or functionality. It's worked for products in other industries over the years - maybe they'll hit a home run here. I hope apple doesn't sue them for using rounded corners :wink:.

Don't like the plastic parts, and limited mounting options. Most of the latter could be fixed with a drill.
 
what's the cost out of curiosity

In europe I can pre-order the s-tek with dir harness and the 30-40 or 60 lbs bladder for 850 euros which is a set comprising of the bladder, dir-style harness and the sta.Looking at course conversion this would be 1000 dollars.

Now comes the insanity...

The optional weight pockets 140 euros.....
the deluxe style harness without wing is 430 euros.(504 dollars)
the dir-style harness without anything else 315 euros. (370 dollars)

This is Halcyon-style pricing. I know they have alot of fans, but for me Halcyon always felt like half of the price is the logo and half of the price is the gear. It seems scubapro based their pricing on a similar model...

Getting the same kit from OMS would run you 350 dollars less, getting it from xdeep 400 dollars less.

I'm not that familiar with the brands big on the american market, but for Europe there is nothing that is this ridiculously priced except Halcyon afaik and Halcyon might actually still be a tad cheaper than the SP options.
 

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